uck home with deadly certainty and the wound was such as man
cannot heal, neither woman. The fabric of happiness, which in a year he
had built himself, was shattered to its foundation, and the fall of it
was fearful. The ruin of it reached over the whole dominion of his soul
and rent all the palace of his body. The temple that had stood so fair,
whither his heart had gone up to worship his beloved one, was destroyed
and utterly beaten to pieces; and the ruin of it was as a heap of dead
bones, so loathsome in decay, that the eyes of his spirit turned in
horror and disgust from the inward contemplation of so miserable a
sight.

Alone and on foot, he went upon his dreary way, dry-eyed and calm. There
was nothing left of all his past life that he cared for. His armour hung
in his chamber in the palace and with it he left the Zoroaster he had
known--the strong, the young, the beautiful; the warrior, the lover, the
singer of sweet songs, the smiter of swift blows, the peerless horseman,
the matchless man. He who went out alone into the great night, was a
moving sorrow, a horror of grief made visible as a walking shadow among
things real, a man familiar already with death as with a friend, and
with the angel of death as with a lover.

Alone--it was a beginning of satisfaction to be away from all the crowd
of known and unknown faces familiar to his life--but the end and
attainment of satisfaction could only come when he should be away from
himself, from the heavy body that wearied him, and from the heavier soul
that was crushed with itself as with a burden. For sorrow was his
companion from that day forth, and grief undying was his counsellor.

Ah God! She was so beautiful and her love was so sweet and strong! Her
face had been as the face of an angel, and her virgin-heart as the
innermost leaves of the rose that are folded together in the bud before
the rising of the sun. Her kiss was as the breath of spring that
gladdens the earth into new life, her eyes as crystal wells, from the
depths whereof truth rose blushing to the golden light of day. Her lips
were so sweet that a man wondered how they could ever part, till, when
they parted, her gentle breath bore forth the music of her words, that
was sweeter than all created sounds. She was of all earthly women the
most beautiful--the very most lovely thing that God had made; and of all
mortal women that have loved, her love had been the purest, the
gentlest, the truest. There wa